Dark Matters
by Z-rex
Summary: When a god of the universe gives chase to the Doctor, the fabric of time and space is fractured. And with the Doctor incapacitated, the only one who can save him and the universe is a certain Miss Rose Tyler.
1. Chapter 1

Doctor Who what-not isn't mine, it's the BBC's. Damn you Santa...

This is my forst fan fic soooo, let's get started

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_On the road again... I can't wait to get on the road again..._

The song wound around the walls of the TARDIS unheard by anyone. Which is not to say that the TARDIS was unoccupied. Its longest held resident sat reclined in the counsel chair. The look on his face was thoughtful if not sad. His head was cocked and his eyes stared fixedly at things unseen making it evident noise was lost on him.

The Doctor's current state was a much-needed rest compared to the past few TARDIS days. After leaving Martha, the Doctor had thrown himself at the TARDIS innards, taking tinkering to a new level. It was an attempt to keep his hands as busy as his mind. His thoughts swirled around and around, eventually reaching the same conclusion. She wasn't the same as Rose. Nothing was. And that was it. He scolded himself for being so childish as to think of Martha as a failed distraction. But despite his best efforts, a voice had taken residence in his mind, whispering things like, "If Rose were here...Rose would never do that..."

_Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway... We're the best of friends..._

The TARDIS pursued its melodic nagging by increasing the volume, but the Doctor remained distant. When he hadn't been pushing his poor vessel's buttons, he occasionally lapsed into such trances. He even went so far as to pause in front of Rose's room once, which remained untouched since her last stay.

_Going places I've never been, seeing things I may never see again...I can't wait to get on the road again._

All at once, the song roared through the corridors at a volume equivalent to a small explosion. The TARDIS had no patience for the Doctor's depression.

The Doctor blinked.

"_Alright!_ I get it!" he snapped at the ceiling. The music stopped as the Doctor interrupted. "Holy bogies of Rassilon, as though I can't just take a moment and-"

**_I'M ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL!_**

Electric guitar erupted in response to the Doctor's complaint, causing the counsel room to shake and the Doctor tumble out of the chair. A familiar metallic sighing began as the TARDIS elected to move out of the vortex. The Doctor lurched up from the floor and grabbed the edge of the counsel. Pulling his head to peer at the controls, he began the ritual that was manning his ship. But despite his "percussive mechanics", the TARDIS would hear none of his directions and soon they were free of the vortex.


	2. Chapter 2

Below a description follows of the Pingman Wyrm which my FRIEND (NOT me) ever so kindly illustrated for me. Okay, I did pay her. I'll figure out how to cheat the system and get a link up to it pretty soon...

Shhhh, shut up, it's starting!

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The universe is a prison, its bars wide and its interior lit only by the occasional star. At the prison's center, contained in the inner most folds of the Old-Fawb Galaxy is the universe's oldest inmate. It is a being so old, most have forgotten its true name and simply refer to it as "The Wyrm God." Even the primitive inhabits of those planets that directly orbit the Wyrm's head are only vaguely aware of its form. They celebrate "The Passing of The Eye" with religious zeal and see "The Passing of The Maw" as the end of days. The Wyrm in question is a massive creature, restlessly undulating in space and breathing out cosmic dust in clouds. Its long snake-like body is several light years long and is topped by a ragged, scaly head. Its eyes, blinded by infinity, glow a sickly yellow. Two tendrils adorn either side of its snout, the end of which are not visible to the present. One end probes in the past while the other explores the future.

The Pingman Wyrm's crime is murder. In its hungry pursuit of Time Lord energy, it was stunned and defeated by the one remembered only as "The Other." It was The Other who then chained the beast to the center of the universe and it is there that the Wyrm serves its punishment by acting as the axis to the universe. Its shear gravitational pull and internal energy are put to use by fastening and recalling all mass in the universe to its center point. For trying to devour Gallifrey, its sentence will only end when time does.

Parole, however, is possible by the appearance of a blue box...

ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZ

"You... stubborn... _git!_ Why do I ever bother with passengers when I have my own ship to deal with!?" the Doctor barked, glaring at the ceiling while brushing himself off.

"_It's bigger on the inside, Doctor!_" he mimicked in a high pitched voice. "Oh yeah! It's also a spoiled rotten, four year old child on the inside!" He gasped, throwing up his arms.

The TARDIS's response was only a smug silence. The Doctor sighed and walked to his coat draped over the front hand rails. "Where have you taken us anyway..." he mumbled, throwing his coat about himself.

He approached the door as though to get the process of discovery and exploration over with as quickly as possible. But upon opening the door, he stopped in mid-stride. What lay before him was not a foreign, awe-inspiring, or hostile landscape. There was no land to speak of. The TARDIS drifted in the cosmos and the Doctor peered into the blackness of its endless night.

But something more than stars shimmered amidst the darkness, something that caught the Doctor's eye. Two stars seemed to move uniformly among the others, they trailed not a form but rather a spiraling mass of deeper black, and they were fixed on him. The Doctor was sure of this, he chose to trust his gut on that fact and the fact that this thing was moving steadily closer.

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That's that for now. You liiiiike? I stumbled upon the legend of The Other in the wiki and decided it was fantastically cool. I also figured the Doctor should run into some god like figure traveling the universe and all that. So, combine the two and you get chapter three!


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor turned around briskly, shutting the door behind him and striding up to the counsel. He pulled up a screen on the controls and read it under a furrowed brow and a hunched back.

"You took us to _the center of the universe?_ I appreciate the effort here but really..." he trailed off as he continued to read. Seconds passed and the Doctor's posture became rigid, his face pale, and his eyes wide. After reading and re-reading what the TARDIS had to say, he straightened slowly, still staring at the screen. He began shaking his head, "Not good. Not good. Not. Good." he whispered under his breath.

He abruptly turned and ran back to the door, opening it and sticking his head out. What had been a pair of yellow jewels in the measureless distance of space had grown larger, coupled now with a silvery set of teeth. Even a hazy outline of the beast's head was becoming visible, as though it were made of a ragged black velvet. As the Doctor gaped onward, the teeth parted.

The Doctor slammed the door closed and leaned his back against it, trying not to imagine what kind of bellow the thing was probably emitting. He wore an expression of disbelief as he stuttered, "Ping...ping...p-p-ping..."

The cloister bell began to chime from somewhere in the distant insides of the TARDIS. The Doctor snapped out of his stupor and lurched forward towards the controls.

"The Pingman Wyrm?! Oh yeah, great idea for a vacation!" the Doctor shouted as he began pressing the controls frantically. The TARDIS shuttered in reaction, beginning to pitch and writhe against the Wyrm's pull. The Doctor cling to the counsel chair, shocked how his ship seemed to be taking its own orders again.

But something was different. Something was wrong.

The overhead lights flickered and the TARDIS gave a metallic groan. Soon, the ship began spasms of turbulence and the lights went out altogether, leaving only an erie internal green glow. The Doctor was now holding on to the chair as one may hold onto a mechanical bull. As the spasms grew fiercer he lost his grip and went sailing against the the wall with a unnerving crack. Then everything went black.

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Rose Tyler trotted across the street, her hands in her pockets and her head down. It had been three years since her "death" and she was beginning to believe that time didn't heal all wounds, it formed scars for them at best. But she was determined to live her life in any universe to its best, even if her soul walked with a limp. She helped Jackie with the baby, maintained some friends and worked for Torchwood. That's where she headed off to, down the crowded city streets. She worked at her job, entertaining herself that maybe she was defending the Earth everyday from near collapse. That she was this Earth's Doctor. She had to. She found that the day-to-day schedule that had kept her mind satisfactorily distracted in her pre-Doctor life came close to driving her mad here. The thought of being superwomen was the best she could do to keep sane.

She continued down the street and stopped at the cross walk. She stood and waited in a crowd of pedestrians. Her eyes scanned the area. For what? Nothing other than a certain Police Box. She had given up long ago on scolding or denying to herself that that's what she constantly scanned the horizon for. It made things far easier to be honest with herself. As her gaze wandered, her eyes fell upon a brick department store. Its corner display cases and modern decor reminded her of her old work. She allowed herself a moment to relive in her memories. She stared distantly at the corner store and she did, something changed. In waves, like those you would see radiating off the street on summer afternoons, the building changed. It was no longer brick, but concrete. There were no longer corner displays, but high edged warehouse peep holes. No one noticed the change, apparently. Even Rose, with her eyes fixed on the building, had trouble putting together what she just saw. This warehouse had been here everyday on her route to work, but why did it seem strange now? So unfamiliar? She tore her eyes away from the storehouse to cross the street and get on to work. But a sensation remained in her mind, like that of waking up and having so clearly remembered a dream, only to remember fragments minutes later...

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The Pingman Wyrm glided on through space. This in itself was remarkable. The Wyrm had been anchored to the Old-Fawb galaxy since Old Time, unable to do more than stretch. But something in the Doctor had broken the chain that kept the Wyrm imprisoned. Now the Wyrm God was loose.

The Wyrm was a god who did not play with dice. It didn't bother with followers, prayer, of the affairs of mortals. The Wyrm couldn't even form an individual thought, let alone focus on an individual. It formed conclusions in a broad emotional analysis. What it felt now was not the elation of freedom, but a deep rooted hatred for the tiny blue speck that had liberated it. It knew that that speck was one in the same with the powerful being who had imprisoned it. It had a need for vengeance and it had a scent.

The Wyrm was on the hunt.

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This chapter was a bit longer, mostly because I'm that bad of a procrastinator when it comes to homework. Sorry I had to use the old cop-out "everything went black" conclusion but, hey, that's what happens when you black-out.


End file.
